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Last year I told myself that any amount of money was worth NOT staying way out by the airport, and by gum, I stuck to it. I’ll be at the Marriott, a stone’s throw away from the convention center.

In my experience at least, here’s what happens when you’re at Gen Con on business and you stay out by the airport. You spend your morning in your hotel room, on your laptop, coordinating things by email — because all kinds of crap comes up first thing in the morning, and if you’re not onsite to handle it in person, you have to handle it remotely. You can’t go offline for 45 minutes while you putter along in rush hour traffic.*

Once everything’s settled down for the moment you head out for the con. You eventually make it downtown, where you search for parking. You hike to the convention center. Maybe you stay there. Or maybe something important that you arranged to be shipped to the hotel arrives late, and you have to go all the way back. Because your stuff is being shipped not to the convention center, but a spot miles and miles away. Repeat every day.

And the kicker last year was that all the money I spent on a rental car and parking totaled to as much as, if not more than, what I would have spent if I’d gotten a pricey downtown hotel. Bah.

I’m really looking forward to just sauntering across the street this year, coffee in hand. Good times.

*Oh, also? Don’t launch a Kickstarter campaign the first day of Gen Con. Seriously.